9781250823755
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Being a Human audiobook

  • By: Charles Foster
  • Narrator: Damian Lynch
  • Length: 10 hours 59 minutes
  • Publisher: Macmillan Audio
  • Publish date: August 31, 2021
  • Language: English
  • (206 ratings)
(206 ratings)
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Being a Human Audiobook Summary

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE ATLANTIC, KIRKUS REVIEWS, AND NEW STATESMAN

A radically immersive exploration of three pivotal moments in the evolution of human consciousness, asking what kinds of creatures humans were, are, and might yet be

How did humans come to be who we are? In his marvelous, eccentric, and widely lauded book Being a Beast, legal scholar, veterinary surgeon, and naturalist extraordinaire Charles Foster set out to understand the consciousness of animal species by living as a badger, otter, fox, deer, and swift. Now, he inhabits three crucial periods of human development to understand the consciousness of perhaps the strangest animal of all–the human being.

To experience the Upper Paleolithic era–a turning point when humans became behaviorally modern, painting caves and telling stories, Foster learns what it feels like to be a Cro-Magnon hunter-gatherer by living in makeshift shelters without amenities in the rural woods of England. He tests his five impoverished senses to forage for berries and roadkill and he undertakes shamanic journeys to explore the connection of wakeful dreaming to religion. For the Neolithic period, when humans stayed in one place and domesticated plants and animals, forever altering our connection to the natural world, he moves to a reconstructed Neolithic settlement. Finally, to explore the Enlightenment–the age of reason and the end of the soul–Foster inspects Oxford colleges, dissecting rooms, cafes, and art galleries. He finds his world and himself bizarre and disembodied, and he rues the atrophy of our senses, the cause for much of what ails us.

Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, natural history, agriculture, medical law and ethics, Being a Human is one man’s audacious attempt to feel a connection with 45,000 years of human history. This glorious, fiercely imaginative journey from our origins to a possible future ultimately shows how we might best live on earth–and thrive.

A Macmillan Audio production from Metropolitan Books

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Being a Human Audiobook Narrator

Damian Lynch is the narrator of Being a Human audiobook that was written by Charles Foster

Charles Foster is the author of Being a Beast, which won the 2016 Ig Nobel Award for biology and was a finalist for the Baillie Gifford Prize. He teaches medical law and ethics at the University of Oxford and his writing has been published in National Geographic, the Guardian, Nautilus, Slate, the Journal of Medical Ethics and many other venues. He lives in Oxford, England.

About the Author(s) of Being a Human

Charles Foster is the author of Being a Human

Being a Human Full Details

Narrator Damian Lynch
Length 10 hours 59 minutes
Author Charles Foster
Publisher Macmillan Audio
Release date August 31, 2021
ISBN 9781250823755

Additional info

The publisher of the Being a Human is Macmillan Audio. The imprint is Macmillan Audio. It is supplied by Macmillan Audio. The ISBN-13 is 9781250823755.

Global Availability

This book is only available in the United States.

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